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Also known as | EMC Symmetrix DMX EMC Symmetrix VMAX |
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Developer | EMC Corporation |
Type | Storage server |
Release date | 1992 |
Discontinued | 2014 |
Successor | Dell EMC VMAX |
The Symmetrix system was an EMC's enterprise storage array. It combined dozens of hard drives into a single virtual device that was then directly attached to a computer or I/O channel, or shared on a storage area network or a local area network. It was the flagship product of EMC in the 1990s and 2000s.
Symmetrix arrays, EMC's flagship product at that time, began shipping in 1990 as a storage array connected to an IBM mainframe via the block multiplexer channel. Newer generations of Symmetrix brought additional host connection protocols which include ESCON, SCSI, Fibre Channel-based storage area networks (SANs), FICON and iSCSI. The Symmetrix product was initially popular within the airline industry and with companies that were willing to deviate from the safety of IBM's 3390 disk subsystem and take a risk with the unproven Symmetrix array.
This product is the main reason for the rapid growth of EMC in the 1990s, both in size and value, from a company valued hundreds of millions of dollars to a multi-billion company. [1] Moshe Yanai managed the Symmetrix development from the product's inception in 1987 until shortly before leaving EMC in 2001, [2] and his Symmetrix development team grew from several people to thousands.
EMC Symmetrix VMAX systems are storage platforms intended for open systems and mainframe computing. Symmetrix VMAX systems run the Enginuity operating environment.
Generation | Models | Production years | Disks (Max) | Memory (Max) |
---|---|---|---|---|
EMC Symmetrix models | ||||
Symm2 | 4000, 4400, 4800 | 1992 | 24 | |
Symm3 | 3100, 3200, 3500 | 1994 | 32 / 96 / 128 | 4 GB |
Symm 4.0 | 3330/5330, 3430/5430, 3700/5700 | 1996 | 32 / 96 / 128 | 8 GB / 16 GB |
Symm 4.8 | 3630/5630, 3830/5830, 3930/5930 | 1998 | 32 / 96 / 256 / 384 | 8 GB / 16 GB |
Symm 5.0 | 8430, 8730 | 2000 | 96 / 384 | 32 GB |
Symm 5.5 | 8230, 8530, 8830 | 2001 | 48 / 96 / 384 | 32 GB |
EMC Symmetrix DMX models | ||||
DMX, DMX2 | DMX-800, DMX-1000, DMX-2000, DMX-3000 | 2003 | 144 / 288 / 576 | |
DMX3, DMX4 | 1500, 2500, 3500, 4500 | 2005 | 240 / 960 / 1440 / 2400 | 64 / 144 / 216 / 256 GB |
EMC Symmetrix VMAX models | ||||
VMAX | VMAX, VMAXe, VMAX-SE, VMAX 10K, VMAX 20K, VMAX 40K | 2009+ | 1080 / 2400 / 3200 | 512 / 1024 / 2048 GB |
Dell EMC VMAX models | ||||
VMAX3 | VMAX 100K, 200K, 400K | 2014+ | 1440 / 2880 / 5760 | 2TB / 8TB / 16 TB |
VMAX All Flash | VMAX 250F, 450F, 850F, 950F | 2016+ | 1PB / 2PB / 4PB / 4PB | 4TB / 8TB / 16TB / 16TB |
Dell PowerMax NVMe models | ||||
PowerMax | PowerMax 2000, 8000 | 2018 | 1PB / 4PB | 4TB / 16TB |
PowerMax | PowerMax 2500, 8500 | 2022 | 8PB / 18PB | ? |
The Direct Matrix Architecture (DMX) product line with models DMX800, DMX1000 and DMX2000 were announced in February 2003. [3]
The system scales from a single Symmetrix VMAX Engine system with one storage bay to a large eight-engine system with a maximum of ten storage bays.
The Symmetrix VMAX system bay can hold one to eight engines. These engines house the hardware for all the data processing capabilities. Each engine contains two director boards, memory chips, and front-end (FE) and back-end (BE) ports for connectivity to hosts and storage bays, respectively.
Each director board contains two Intel quad core processors for data processing, 16, 32 or 64 GB of physical memory, one System Interface Board (SIB) that connects the director to the Matrix Interface Board Enclosure (MIBE), front-end and back-end ports.
The VMAX has one to ten storage bays for hard drives. Each storage bay contains 16 Disk Array Enclosures (DAE). Each DAE contains 15-25 hard drives. VMAX supports SATA, Fiber Channel, SAS and Solid State drives. [4]
The Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) is a family of software products that facilitates the data replication from one Symmetrix storage array to another through a storage area network or Internet Protocol (IP) network.
SRDF logically pairs a device or a group of devices from each array and replicates data from one to the other synchronously or asynchronously. An established pair of devices can be split, so that separate hosts can access the same data independently (maybe for backup), and then be resynchronised.
In synchronous mode (SRDF/S), the primary array waits until the secondary array has acknowledged each write before the next write is accepted, ensuring that the replicated copy of the data is always as current as the primary. However, the latency due to propagation increases significantly with distance.
Asynchronous SRDF (SRDF/A) transfers changes made to the secondary array in units called delta sets, which are transferred at defined intervals. Although the remote copy of the data will never be as current as the primary copy, this method can replicate data over considerable distances and with reduced bandwidth requirements and minimal impact on host performance.
Other forms of SRDF integrate with clustered environments and to manage multiple SRDF pairs where replication of multiple devices must be consistent (such as with the data files and log files of a database application).
Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP network. iSCSI facilitates data transfers over intranets and to manage storage over long distances. It can be used to transmit data over local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), or the Internet and can enable location-independent data storage and retrieval.
Serial Storage Architecture (SSA) was a serial transport protocol used to attach disk drives to server computers.
Iomega was a company that produced external, portable, and networked data storage products. Established in the 1980s in Roy, Utah, United States, Iomega sold more than 410 million digital storage drives and disks, including the Zip drive floppy disk system. Formerly a public company, it was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2008, and then by Lenovo, which rebranded the product line as LenovoEMC, until discontinuation in 2018.
Clariion is a discontinued SAN disk array manufactured and sold by EMC Corporation, it occupied the entry-level and mid-range of EMC's SAN disk array products. In 2011, EMC introduced the EMC VNX Series, designed to replace both the Clariion and Celerra products.
A World Wide Name (WWN) or World Wide Identifier (WWID) is a unique identifier used in storage technologies including Fibre Channel, Parallel ATA, Serial ATA, SCSI and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS).
ESCON is a data connection created by IBM, and is commonly used to connect their mainframe computers to peripheral devices such as disk storage, tape drives and IBM 3270 display controllers. ESCON is an optical fiber, half-duplex, serial interface. It originally operated at a rate of 10 MB/s, which was later increased to 17 MB/s. The current maximum distance is 43 kilometers.
FICON is the IBM proprietary name for the ANSI FC-SB-3 Single-Byte Command Code Sets-3 Mapping Protocol for Fibre Channel (FC) protocol. It is a FC layer 4 protocol used to map both IBM's antecedent channel-to-control-unit cabling infrastructure and protocol onto standard FC services and infrastructure. The topology is fabric utilizing FC switches or directors. Valid rates include 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16 Gigabit per second data rates at distances up to 100 km.
Peer to Peer Remote Copy or PPRC is a protocol to replicate a storage volume to another control unit at a remote site. Synchronous PPRC causes each write to the primary storage volume to be performed to the secondary volume as well, and the I/O is only considered complete when the update to both the primary and secondary volumes has completed. Asynchronous PPRC will flag tracks on the primary to be duplicated to the secondary when time permits.
A virtual tape library (VTL) is a data storage virtualization technology used typically for backup and recovery purposes. A VTL presents a storage component as tape libraries or tape drives for use with existing backup software.
EMC NetWorker is an enterprise-level data protection software product from Dell EMC that unifies and automates backup to tape, disk-based, and flash-based storage media across physical and virtual environments for granular and disaster recovery.
The IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) is a block storage virtualization appliance that belongs to the IBM System Storage product family. SVC implements an indirection, or "virtualization", layer in a Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN).
The IBM Storage product portfolio includes disk, flash, tape, NAS storage products, storage software and services. IBM's approach is to focus on data management.
A clustered file system (CFS) is a file system which is shared by being simultaneously mounted on multiple servers. There are several approaches to clustering, most of which do not employ a clustered file system. Clustered file systems can provide features like location-independent addressing and redundancy which improve reliability or reduce the complexity of the other parts of the cluster. Parallel file systems are a type of clustered file system that spread data across multiple storage nodes, usually for redundancy or performance.
A storage area network (SAN) or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access data storage devices, such as disk arrays and tape libraries from servers so that the devices appear to the operating system as direct-attached storage. A SAN typically is a dedicated network of storage devices not accessible through the local area network (LAN).
EMC VPLEX is a virtual computer data storage product introduced by EMC Corporation in May 2010. VPLEX implements a distributed "virtualization" layer within and across geographically disparate Fibre Channel storage area networks and data centers.
IBM Storwize systems were virtualizing RAID computer data storage systems with raw storage capacities up to 32 PB. Storwize is based on the same software as IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC).
Moshe Yanai is an Israeli electrical engineer. He is an inventor, businessman, entrepreneur, aviator, investor, and philanthropist. He led the development of the EMC Symmetrix, the flagship product of EMC Corporation in the 1990s, which prevented, to some extent, financial chaos in New York Stock Exchange and certain banks after the September 11 attacks, as further detailed below.
RecoverPoint is a continuous data protection product offered by Dell EMC which supports asynchronous and synchronous data replication of block-based storage. RecoverPoint was originally created by a company called Kashya, which was bought by EMC in 2006.
Disk-based backup refers to technology that allows one to back up large amounts of data to a disk storage unit. It is the technology which is often supplemented by tape drives for data archival or replication to another facility for disaster recovery. Additionally, backup-to-disk has several advantages over traditional tape backup for both technical and business reasons. With continued improvements in storage devices to provide faster access and higher storage capacity, a prime consideration for backup and restore operations, backup-to-disk will become more prominent in organizations.
Dell EMC VMAX is Dell EMC’s flagship enterprise storage array product line. It evolved out of the EMC Symmetrix array, EMC’s primary storage product of 1990s and early 2000s.